Crib and dresser

And so the story begins… roughly 8 1/2 months ago I found out my wife was pregnant and I took that as an opportunity to go crazy and build all of the nursery furniture including a rocking chair that is still in the works. I searched high and low for a design that I liked enough to spend the time to build that my son would hopefully one day pass down to his children. I went to all of the baby and furniture stores, searched the internet high and low and came across a post by Jeff Wenz. They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and well…. Jeff you should consider yourself flattered cause I copied not only your crib design but also your dresser as well. For those of you reading this I pm’d Jeff and he was kind enough to talk to me on the phone to discuss the details of his project as I bombarded him with a lot of questions. It is great to have such a knowledgable community to learn from as I have become a much better woodworker due to this site alone.

This project was my first time for a lot of new techniques and tools. Along the way I acquired quite a few new tools that I have no idea how I did without them before. The wood used was soft maple for both the dresser and crib, finish used was General finishes medium brown Dye stain with a oil rubbed moisture resistant laquer finish. I was going to turn the feet on this project but as it got down to the wire I decided to just buy them from a local supplier. I had to build a mortising jig to be able to cut the mortises for the individual slats in the lower rails based after this one. I built the matress support out of 1/2 mdf with maple trim and 1/8” steel for the support mechanism that raises and lowers the matress to a total of 3 positions. I used soft close drawers slides on the dresser and the drawers are built with through dovetails.

The crib took me about a month and a half to start and finish which included building a lot of jigs and the dresser took about a month to complete. The rocking chair that Im currently building has only taken me a week so far to build and all thats left is some sanding and finish. All in all I am happy with the outcome but I am not too certain of how I feel about dye stains. They are a bear to work with especially on a project with a lot of detail. I applied all finishes with an HVLP system.

Sorry about the quality of the pictures as I took these with my camera phone.

Thanks for looking!David Drummond

-- "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do... Explore, Dream, Discover” Mark Twain